wow, once the house is out of my hair? I’m going to have a ton of time on my hands.”
I smiled. “Plenty of time to work on your art.”
“Oh, definitely.” Kelly’s lips quirked. “But I think I want… I mean, I don’t need one, but I still kind of feel like I want to get a job.”
Aaron and I both straightened.
“Yeah?” Aaron asked. “Have you thought more about what you want to do?”
Kelly shrugged. “Kinda? I just need something that means interacting with people and being out of the house. I think I’d keel over and die in a cubicle, but there has to be something I can do to get some human interaction. Beyond, you know…” He gestured at us. “So I think I’m going to finally get off my butt and apply for that job at Bold Brew.”
I smiled. “That sounds like it’ll be a great change of pace for you.”
“Right? Plus, I could—” Kelly stopped himself, and his cheeks colored.
“What?” I asked.
“I, um…” He cleared his throat and couldn’t quite look me in the eye as he said, “I was going to say I could try to time my breaks so I could join you guys for lunch more often, but that’s your thing, so it’s—”
“I’d love that,” Aaron said.
Kelly turned to him, eyes wide. “You would?”
Aaron smiled and took Kelly’s hand. “Of course.” His eyes flicked to me. “What about you?”
I nodded. “Definitely. I’m sure you won’t be working every time we’re there, so we’ll have our one-on-one time, but yeah, I’d love to have you join us.” I paused. “I think we’ll all need one-on-one time with each other, but our lunch dates at the coffee shop… They were written in blood as our time”—I gestured at myself and Aaron—“for years, but that was when it was just the two of us. Having you join us has been great. I have no objection to more of that.”
“Neither do I,” Aaron said. “Plus you can keep Will out of trouble when he gets there before I do.”
I eyed him. “Really?”
Kelly stifled a laugh. “I’ll do the best I can.”
I shifted the look to him, and he shrugged with mock innocence. Then I rolled my eyes and the three of us chuckled. God, it was so good to be back to easy banter as we made our way into this uncharted territory. I had no doubt things would be hard sometimes, and adjusting to being a trio instead of a couple would take time.
But we’d sort of become that trio when we weren’t paying attention anyway, so as far as I was concerned, we were halfway there.
And I couldn’t wait to see where we went from here.
Epilogue
Aaron
A few months later.
“And that”—Kelly scrawled his name across the bottom of the last form with a flourish—“is that.” He emphatically pushed the form across the conference room table. “Done.”
Jason, the real estate attorney, added the paper to the stack, and he smiled. “Yep. You’re done.”
“Thank God.” Kelly handed over the house keys, the garage door openers, and a couple of other remotes I couldn’t immediately identify.
We exchanged glances, and both breathed sighs of relief. It was over. Not that it had been a long process, thank God—the house had sold faster than we’d expected. Hopefully the new owner made it into the home it could never be for Kelly, and we all wished them the best of luck.
Jason stepped out to make some copies. Kelly folded his arms on the table, and with a heavy sigh, he rested his head on top of them. I put a hand on the back of his neck and kneaded gently, which got a sleepy little murmur out of him.
Smiling, I didn’t say anything. Kelly had been so stressed about this whole thing, so utterly convinced something would fall through and he’d be stuck with the house forever.
“It’s going to be like a reverse haunted house,” he’d muttered the other night. “It’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life instead of the other way around.”
Will and I had assured him it wouldn’t be so bad. Even if this deal fell through, there’d been other buyers sniffing around, and despite Kelly’s certainty that some legal loophole would appear at the last minute, he was not in any way legally obligated to hold on to the house.
Today, it was over. He had exorcised the house from his life, and I wasn’t at all surprised he was collapsing under the weight of his own